comment - 01 07 11 - prepay credit cards a good earner

Living life online these days means that without a method of payment that is universally accepted you are in trouble. There are many methods that you could use, paypal is good for one but thats only for places that will accept it and it only allows you to use it in your home country without issue. So what to do, if you dont want (or cant get) a normal credit or debit card then there are a couple of options available for you, and the main one seems to be the pre-pay credit card.

Unlike a normal credit card these ones only let you spend what you have in the account and do not actually lend money, you buy the card, load it with money and use it as normal when you run out you cant go overdrawn or in debt it just stops working. Now I went looking around for one of these and a couple of things struck me (and this is based on UK findings it might be different in your local). Firstly, they all charge you money to set up an account, that can range from a few pound to thirty, so they are making profit already, then they charge you for basically everything you do with it, there is charge to add money, yes they actually charge you a fee to put money INTO the account, which bank could normally get away with that one! They charge you for buying something, this is usually a set percentage of the cost which is worying so if you spend 100 you pay 2.75 to them for the privalege. If you buy oversees they charge exchange and the fee. So at every stage of events you have to pay them. They make money for letting you use your money....but what choice do you have?

Then there is their customer service premium rate call anyone...most charge you 30 a minute to call them so they are in profit there. All in all they are making money on money on money... but we let them.

So when looking for a method of payment, yes you have to get a card but look out for costs ...
do they offer a flat charge a month rather than a transaction fee
will they waive the issuing fee if you load the card whilst buying
do they offer email customer support to save on phone charges
if your going to use abroad whats the charge...

I am going to get one but still looking for the best contender...EOL